


Beetle

by Wander (yoimwander)



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25382170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoimwander/pseuds/Wander
Summary: The boogyman beneath his bed, and the heavy-breathing yellow eyes that flash inside his closet, both look at him and consider thumbs, and pressure, and the sound of a squish.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Beetle

**Author's Note:**

> "Losin' my boundaries,  
> Setting me free."  
> — [Monster vs. Angel](https://open.spotify.com/track/1LoQR2zOg0tRRYq9M3kcQt?si=ZKamLpDEQVOO311FalFTDQ), WDL, Mawe

If he is to survive, certain sacrifices must be made.

A knife, pristine and unused, gleans with the unimpressive reflection of fluorescent light. It produces a glare bright enough to wipe clean any trace of his own likeness.

Sam finds this pleasing.

_It had gotten colder, the bite of autumn turning brittle around the edges, so his mother had insisted on additional layers before allowing him the benefit of playing outside. Sam waddles with the grace of a marshmallow. His father's green flannel jacket hardly fits, even wrapped over bundles of thermal and tweed._

When his eyes close—whether a blink, or an annoying need to rub the dry out after having kept them open for too long—Sam sees blood. Smells it, too.

All scents are comprised of miniscule molecules of the initial subject, scraped off and drifting through the air to cling persistently inside your nose.

It's like copper, thick and cloying and inescapable.

_He follows the path through the woods. A meticulous trail ringed with drooping branches, a halo of bright orange and heavy brown. Dead leaves float ocean-like along the forest floor. Their musky aroma lingers._

_At the end of the trail lies a shallow creek. Stubby dark fingers not quite old enough to have developed a lithe grace reach forward. Sam touches the water._

_It's cold._

The knife isn't heavy. He tests its balance. Taps the flat side of it against the palm of his hand. In the middle of the night, the barracks are full. The bathroom is not.

_Pulling his hand from the creek, Sam spots a beetle against a nearby river rock. It scrabbles up a wet edge and slides back down._

_He watches._

_Up it goes, thin legs desperate. And down it slides, progress lost to nature, forces much bigger than itself. It will drown if it slips far enough to get swept away in the gentle current of cold water. Drown, or freeze._

A beautiful thing—a lost life. Really, it's beautiful. Abjectly so. No more than modern art, a model draped haphazardly over the soft edge of a chaise lounge.

That's how Isaac would see it. Would probably add flourish: the model is Latina, with a strong jaw and dark eyes, and her back is bent far enough to be broken. Draped, Sam had said, but she's so much more than that.

_Cracked._

_Some hair-thin tear across its exoskeleton. It isn't a shiny beetle. Just some black, nondescript thing. Forgettable._

_Struggling._

If he notches each kill along his arm, sharp edge of the blade sliding in to the bone at a thirty degree angle, out, then a mirrored thirty degrees back in, one clean chunk of flesh metered and pulled from him like so much meat, the appendage would whittle down into a fine pick.

Unreasonable.

Sam doesn't want to mar himself.

At least, not in such a pedestrian manner.

_Soft grey eyes widen, look this way and that until they land with immense focus on a sturdy, leafless twig, nestled half beneath the mucky underbrush. Sam leaps from his steady crouch, tugs the twig free from damp ground, and plants his covered knees in creekside mud with very little thought leant to the disappointment his mother will later express at his inability to stay clean._

_The beetle climbs up. Slides down again, this time pitiful little legs come dangerously close to the water._

_Sam places the twig gently within reach and waits, patiently, for the beetle to make a final attempt._

Fitting, isn't it?

Some voice he recognizes but that is not his own cackles between his ears, good-naturedly. Sam lifts the knife and trails the sharp tip of it over his nose, across his cheek, a feather-light touch meant only to tickle.

Beside him, resting like a Shakespearean head on the sink counter, lies his type MJOLNIR LOCUS helmet—black visor, white accents, a green X crossing the brow.

Cold and unseeing, the helmet watches him with an indifferent eye, and says, "Some soldier you turned out to be."

Scowling, Sam pulls the knife from his face and taps it threateningly against his helmet.

"As if you're any better. You've been with me every step of the way."

"Are you proud? One of the last survivors of that bloody mess. You must feel pretty good about yourself."

_The beetle latches on during its next attempt. Sam pulls it gently to safety, setting it a few paces from the creek, on a dry rock. He crouches down until he's eye level with the tiny thing._

_"Are you happy?" he asks it._

"I'm … not," he says, knife pushing in, in, until he can feel a degree of resistance that implies any more pressure would leave a mark on the UNSC-issued equipment.

"You are, you must be," the helmet replies, voice familiar, rumbling.

"I don't feel anything at all," he admits, pulling the knife away.

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Isn't it?"

_Resting lazily, the beetle doesn't respond. Sam inches closer and closer until he goes cross-eyed trying to keep it in his vision._

_He can see it breathe, so still it sits._

_If he set his thumb on its cracked shell and pressed down, slowly, he would hear a wet squish._

"It's powerful," the LOCUS says, with a tone of approval. "Metered. Controlled."

"It's sick."

_"How else would you have survived?" Sam asks, rhetorically. He did not create the beetle's life, but he had continued it._

You worry too much, the cackling voice, familiar, not his, preens and rubs and licks along the inside of his skull.

Maybe it'd be better if you didn't worry, huh?

_He knows, even as a child, that some thoughts transcend humanity. That the boogyman beneath his bed, and the heavy-breathing yellow eyes that flash inside his closet, both look at him and consider thumbs, and pressure, and the sound of a squish._

"I'm not a monster."

The laughter picks up, an airy tenor, and his helmet shimmies on the counter, a heinous stop-still animation that washes out the edges of Sam's vision.

"You are," the LOCUS says.

You are, the familiar voice says, ringing inside his head.

_"But you don't have to be," Sam affirms. He stands, leaving the tired beetle on its dry rock, and plucks through heavy dead leaves back to the trail._

_His mother will not be happy about the mess on his knees. She will shake her head in disapproval, say,_

"Look at me." A jittery turn. The helmet lifeless, speaking, so vivid. "I have been there each time. Red and slick, each time. Would you call me a monster? No. I am equipment. I am a means to an end. I am a tool, utilized by men."

_"We can just put it in the washing machine," Sam replies, smiling up at his mother. "That's what it's for, anyways."_

_She shakes her head, but pats his hair fondly, tells him to go get changed._

"To feel nothing about it is a mercy," the LOCUS continues.

Sam tests the weight of the knife. Touches its sharp edge to the top left of his brow. Drags it down at an angle. The voice in his head giggles. His helmet falls quiet. He strokes another line, a reflection, and does not feel the sting of the blade or the wet sensation of warm blood trickling down his face, but he sees it in the mirror, grey eyes wide and flat, staring at him with an unfeeling confidence.

"You are not a monster," Sam tells himself. He smells blood. Little particles of his own dark flesh torn away, trickling into his nose.

_Much later, the beetle, not built for cold weather and too tired to journey beneath the layered dead leaves blanketing the forest floor, shrivels and dies._

"You are a machine."

If he is to survive, certain sacrifices must be made.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to @Daks for the Miles tweet dump, that immediately gave me ~thinky thoughts~
> 
> The imagery of dead leaves floating ocean-like along the forest floor is a reference to this passage in Paradise Lost:
> 
> Nathless he so endur'd, till on the Beach  
> Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call'd  
> His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't  
> Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks  
> In Vallombrosa
> 
> (Because I'm a shameless nerd for that sorta shit.)


End file.
